[Sca-cooks] camels

[Prydwen]

At 07:59 PM 7/8/2001 -0500,Stefan wrote:

> > Old if somewhat non-PC Middle Eastern blessing,  "May all your children be
> > male and all your camels be female."
>
>Do male camels not make good beasts of burden? Perhaps they are harder
>to control? Or do the Arabs milk camels? Maybe its because female
>children eventually require dowries and female camels don't? :-)

Probably because female camels, like mares, ewes and nanny goats, bear
young and you only need one male to a number of females, thus herd increase
and wealth.  Most breeding males of the aforementioned species are
difficult to deal with in a herd situation, their minds being on other
things and humans merely a source of irritation. <chuckle>  Yes, again all
of those herd species produce milk and can be an additional source of
liquid in a desert environment.  I believe that gelded males are commonly
used for beasts of burden and riding, as are the females.  Because I'm
curious, I've asked a number of camel keepers at various zoo about the
species' bad reputation.  The consensus seems to be that they're large,
(like elephants, horses and cattle) they can be very dangerous under
certain circumstances (provoked and/or abused). Under normal conditions and
with gentle handling, like the other members of their family (llamas,
alpacas, etc.) they can be pretty easy going.  There was a book out about
six years ago or so about a woman that crossed the Australian Outback with
a pair of camels, pretty interesting.

Prydwen (collector of the weird)